The Collected (A Jonathan Quinn Novel) (21 page)

Peter. Berkeley. And either himself or Nate.

He tried slotting in each of the other names, looking for a combination that might ring a bell.

No.

No.

No.

Nothing. No set of players that made any sense.

He finally gave up and looked over at Orlando. She had her laptop open, and, against airline regulations, connected to the Internet via an unused channel she’d hacked into through the plane’s own datalink system.

“Anything on the cargo plane?” he asked.

“Oh, yeah. Got that a while ago,” she said.

“And you weren’t going to tell me?”

“You were resting.”

“I was
not
resting.”

“Well, that’s what it looked like.”

He frowned. “So, the plane?”

“Byrd Cargo. Named after founder Norman Byrd. Established nineteen sixty-five. Based out of Tampa, Florida.”

“Anything on the specific aircraft?”

“On a long-term charter.”

“To who?”

“A company called Gene/Sea International. And before you ask, they don’t exist.”

“And Byrd Cargo knows this?”

“No. Gene/Sea’s got a pretty good front. Websites, bank accounts, PR releases. They claim to be a biochem company focused on the ocean. Even have a few research papers you can download. All very legit-looking.”

“But they’re not real.”

She looked over at him, her face blank. “Didn’t I already say that?”

“Yes, you did,” he conceded. “Who are they fronting for?”

She looked back at her screen. “That part, not so easy.”

“That’s what you’re trying to figure out now?”

“No. A little difficult from here. I have a friend looking into it.”

“So what’s that you’re working on?”

“I finally got some hits back on one of the bots I sent out.” Her bots were programs that wormed their way through the Internet, looking for whatever they’d been instructed to find.

“Concerning?”

“Senator Lopez.”

“And?

“
And
what my bot dug up might not mean anything,” she said. In a tone indicating Quinn should have already figured that out, she added, “Which is why I’m working on it.”

“What did it turn up?”

She took a deep breath, and turned to him again. “Sweetheart, let me figure out if this means anything, and if it does, you’ll be the first to know. Cool?”

Quinn held up his hands in surrender. “Cool.”

She looked unimpressed. “Can I get back to work now?”

“Be my guest.”

He leaned back in his chair, thinking he could get a couple minutes of shut-eye before they began their descent.

Just as he was drifting off, Orlando shook his arm and said, “Hey!”

He opened his eyes, sleep retreating as fast as it had come.

“What? Now you’re ready to talk?”

Her face scrunched up. “What are you talking about?”

“Lopez? I didn’t just dream all that, did I?”

“Don’t worry about Lopez right now.” She nodded her chin at her screen. “Just got an email from Crissy Franklin.”

Franklin was one of the people they’d contacted, trying to locate one of the ops on their potential-missing list.

“And?”

“She says Maurice Curson is unaccounted for.”

Quinn thought for a moment. “Curson? He wasn’t on our list.”

“We didn’t include him because he’s been out of the business for a few years.”

“Blackballed,” he said, remembering. Something had happened on one of Curson’s jobs that forced him out of the game.

“Apparently he’s been working private security since then,” Orlando said. “But Crissy says he recently got a gig, a
real
gig. He was supposed to be back a few days ago, but there’s been no sign of him.”

Quinn frowned. “The connection’s kind of iffy, don’t you think?”

“We should still put his name on our list.”

“If you think so,” Quinn said.

A bong sounded throughout the cabin. A flight attendant came on the intercom, telling them in Spanish that they were descending into Tampico, and that electrical devices needed to be turned off and stowed away.

As soon as they were on the ground, Quinn checked his phone. There was a message from Steve Howard asking him to call back via vid-chat ASAP. Unfortunately, there wasn’t any place private enough in the small terminal to see what he wanted, so they arranged for a car first, and made the call from inside the sedan.

Quinn held his phone out so that both Orlando and Daeng could see Howard’s face when it appeared.

“Sorry for the delay,” Quinn said. “What’s up?”

“I was finally able to get a look at the security footage from Peter’s building,” Howard said. “Unfortunately, there’s a chunk missing.”

“From when?”

“Seven days ago. Eleven p.m. to one a.m. I’ve checked all the days between that and when Misty came to the apartment, and also five days on the other side, but found nothing unusual.”

“So you think seven days ago is probably when he went missing?”

“It
is
when he went missing,” Howard said.

Quinn’s eyes narrowed. “Explain.”

“Peter’s building isn’t the only one with security cameras. I checked the others in the area, and hit the jackpot on a building same side of the street and a few doors down. One of their cameras is aimed just wide enough to catch the front of Peter’s building. Here, let me show you.”

Howard’s face disappeared as he pointed his camera phone at a laptop sitting on a table next to him. On the screen was a nighttime image of a street. The camera that had shot it obviously had a low-light setting, because despite the hour it was taken, it was easy to make out details.

“This was shot at 11:57 p.m. You see that station wagon?” A finger moved into view and pointed at a car parked along the left edge of the screen. “That’s right in front of Peter’s building. That’s where you should pay attention.”

The finger pulled out of the picture, and the image began to move, jerking for a moment as Howard played it at an increased speed, then slowing to normal as a van pulled up next to the station wagon. Four men exited, and the van drove away. The men walked purposefully toward Peter’s building and were soon out of frame.

Quinn’s jaw tightened as the picture paused.

“There’s an eight-minute span when nothing happens,” Howard said. “I’ve cut that out.”

The security footage started playing again. The street remained quiet for a few more moments before the van returned, pulling to a stop in the same spot as last time. It sat idling for several seconds, then the men exited the building, only their number had increased by one. Peter was propped between two of the men, his head drooping forward.

As disturbing as that was, the thing that stuck out the most to Quinn was the image of one of the four men with Peter, the same man Quinn had keyed in on when the group originally climbed out of the van. A bald man, the same size and shape as the man who’d been in Bangkok, whom both Burke and Moreno had confirmed was their contact.

He glanced at Orlando and Daeng and saw they’d made the connection, too.

The image stopped again and Howard reappeared. “I ran the van’s plates. Stolen, and so far not recovered. I could keep hunting around, but I think we’ve pretty much run out of leads here.”

“No, it would be a waste of time,” Quinn agreed. “Can you stand by in DC in case something else comes up?”

“Absolutely.”

“Thanks. Is Misty there with you?”

“I’m at her place right now,” Howard said. “But she’s in the other room. She didn’t want to see the footage again.” He paused, and added in a low voice, “She’s pretty upset.”

“Can you get her for me?”

“Sure.”

The image became a blur as Howard carried his phone through Misty’s apartment. A moment later, they could hear him say, “Quinn wants to talk to you.”

“Give me a moment,” Misty told him, her voice distant. The wait lasted nearly a minute, then, “Okay.”

The phone switched hands, and Misty, looking tired and scared, stared into the camera.

“I have a few more questions. Is that all right?” Quinn asked.

“Yes, of course.”

“When the Office was closed, all the records were either taken over by another agency or destroyed, correct?”

“Mostly we were ordered to destroy them. A few select files were transferred, mainly ongoing operations.”

“So, in effect, there’s no way to access information about any job the Office undertook?”

She looked uncomfortable. “Um, right.”

“Misty?”

She stared off for a moment, and then turned back to the camera. “Do you think there’s something in one of the files that will bring Peter back?”

“That’s what I was hoping.”

“We…we kept a digital backup,” she said. “Well, Peter did. I helped him collect it. When we were done, he told me never to mention it.”

A backup was exactly what Quinn had been hoping for. He knew Peter would never permanently destroy everything. It would have gone against his always-prepared nature. “Do you know where it is?”

She hesitated before nodding.

“And you can access it?”

“If he didn’t change the codes, yes.”

That was a potential problem. “Okay, I need you to see if you can get in. If the codes are changed, let us know and we’ll try to break them.” By “we,” he meant Orlando.

“What am I supposed to be looking for?”

“You have something you can write on?”

“Hold on.” She set the phone down, giving them a view of the ceiling. She returned a few seconds later. “Okay, go ahead.”

“I’d like you to pull any information on jobs that had the following personnel attached: Evan Berkeley, Maurice Curson, and myself.”

 “Am I supposed to pull jobs where there was just one of you? Because if I am, that’s going to be a hell of a lot of—”

“No,” Quinn said. “Any pair combinations, and with the three of us together only.”

“Okay,” she said. Now that she had a task to perform, much of the stress had left her face. “I’ll call you back as soon as I can. A few hours should be enough.”

CHAPTER 33

TAMPICO, MEXICO

L
IZ ARRIVED IN
Tampico planning to find another taxi like she’d done in Monterrey. Instead, before exiting the building, she spotted a booth advertising tours and local hotels, and learned that yes, she could hire a personal English-speaking guide, and yes, one who could start as soon as she wanted.

“In an hour would be perfect,” she said, paying the fee.

Right on time, a young man named Oscar met her at the booth. He was all smiles and service as he guided her out to his car, rattling off a list of places his standard tourist route would take her.

“Actually, I’m looking for something a little more specialized,” she said when he finished.

“Specialized?”

Her first instructions were for him to wait in the car outside the terminal while she went back in for a few minutes. “Circle around if you have to, but don’t be gone long. As soon as I come back out, we’ll leave.”

Confused and a bit wary, Oscar had reluctantly agreed. He drove her from the parking lot back to the terminal.

Inside, she checked first on the status of the next flight from Monterrey, and learned that it would be landing in a matter of minutes. This being a small airport meant the time between touchdown and exiting the aircraft would be short, so she found a spot from where she could see the corridor that all arriving passengers would be funneled through.

As the people from the Monterrey flight began trickling out, her stomach started tying itself in knots, as she worried again that Jake and his friends had gone someplace other than Tampico. Then she spotted Daeng, and a moment later, Jake and Orlando.

Liz headed outside and spent a couple nervous minutes waiting for Oscar to return. The second he pulled to the curb, she jumped into the back.

“Wait,” she said as he started to pull back into traffic.

He glanced back at her. “We can’t wait here.”

“We won’t be long. Just hold on, okay?”

“What are we waiting for?”

She didn’t answer his question until the other three stepped outside.

CHAPTER 34

W
HILE MORENO HAD
not told them the precise location of the abandoned facility, he had given them enough information that Orlando was able to pinpoint the most logical location, using satellite imagery.

They drove twenty-five minutes into the Mexican countryside, the only words spoken Orlando’s as she doled out directions when needed. Finally she pointed at a narrow, blacktop road that branched off to the east, and said, “There, turn right.”

As Quinn did as instructed, he checked his rearview mirror. There had been a car behind them all the way from the city, never falling too far back and never coming too close. A tail? Perhaps, but he couldn’t be sure.

His gaze switched back and forth between the road ahead and the mirror, but the other car drove past the road and didn’t make the turn behind them. Maybe it was just a local who’d happened to be going in the same direction. Maybe. His cautious mind wasn’t willing to go one hundred percent there just yet.

“That’s got to be it, right?” Daeng asked.

He was leaning forward between the two front seats, looking at a building about a quarter mile away on the left.

“Should be,” Orlando said.

A ten-foot high chain-link fence surrounded the property. Here and there, signs hung on it, warning people to stay away.

Quinn parked in front of the gate and they all climbed out. Standing near the fence, he examined the building. It was about the size of an average apartment building back in Los Angeles. Two stories, made of concrete. It looked like it had been built to last centuries. An old office building, perhaps, or manufacturing facility.

“Up and over or through?” Daeng asked.

The fence was topped by two strands of barbed wire. Not exactly inviting. As for the gate, it was held shut by a chain secured with a heavy padlock. It would have been easy enough to unlock if they’d had a set of picks.